Tag: French election

France voted a record number of women into parliament, election results showed on Monday, after President Emmanuel Macron’s victorious Republic on the Move party fielded a gender-balanced candidate list.

Of the 577 newly elected lawmakers, 233 were female, beating the previous record of 155 set after the last election.

According to Inter-Parliamentary Union data compiled at the start of June, France jumped from 64th to 17th in the world rankings of female parliamentary representation and to sixth place in Europe, overtaking Britain and Germany.

LREM, which won an overwhelming majority in Sunday’s ballot, had the highest proportion of women elected, at 47 percent.

“For the first time under the (post-war) Fifth Republic, the National Assembly will be deeply renewed, more diverse, younger,” the party’s acting president, Catherine Barbaroux, said.

“But above all, allow me to rejoice, because this is a historic event for the representation of women in the National Assembly.”

Female representation in the National Assembly has risen steadily, from 12.3 per cent at the 2002 election to 38.6 per cent this time.

Most parties still put up more men for election, despite France having a system in which a party’s funding is restricted if women do not make up at least 49 per cent of candidates.

Female candidates have also tended to stand in constituencies they are unlikely to win, keeping the numbers of women who make it to the Palais-Bourbon low. (NAN)

Thirty-nine-year-old president-elect of France, Mr. Emmanuel Macron, has said those who keep wondering at the age difference between him and his 64-year-old wife are misogynists and homophobes.

A misogynist is a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women; while a homophobe is a person with an extreme and irrational aversion to homosexuality and homosexual people.

Critics of his marriage to a much older grandmother are of the view that the marriage is not just a smokescreen for his homosexuality, it also provides him the opportunity to live what they call “parallel life.”

In an interview with the Le Parisien newspaper, Macron addressed the speculations about his sexuality and a so-called “parallel lives” that people had attached to him.

He said misogyny and homophobia were to blame for assumptions that he could not be in love with his wife.

He noted that if his wife was younger than him, nobody would question the validity of their relationship.

“If I had been 20 years older than my wife, nobody would have thought for a single second that I couldn’t be (an intimate partner),” he said.

“It’s because she is 20 (sic) years older than me that lots of people say, ‘This (relationship) can’t be tenable, it can’t be possible.”

Reports concerning his relationship, he claimed, were due to “misogyny” and people submitting to “traditional, homogenous” views about society.

Mr. Macron first met his wife, Brigitte Trogneux, when he was a 15-year-old drama student. They developed a closer relationship when they worked together to re-write a play.

The couple married in 2007, when he was almost 30 and she was 54. During the presidential campaign, Ms Macron has been a constant figure by his side.

The Independent says a new biography of the politician revealed that the teenager’s parents were shocked when they discovered he had started an affair with his married school teacher.

Brigitte had three children in her first marriage. They are now all grown up and work as an engineer, a cardiologist, and a lawyer. She also has six grandchildren.

European stocks markets soared at the open Monday as investors welcomed news that pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron won the largest number of votes in the first round of France’s presidential election.

The Paris CAC 40 index shot up 4.1 percent to 5,267.88 points, while there were sharp gains across Europe.

People cast their ballots at a polling station in Le Touquet, northern France, on April 23, 2017, during the first round of the Presidential elections. / AFP PHOTO / Eric FEFERBERG

Nearly 47 million French voters go to the polls on Sunday in the first round of the country’s presidential election.

– Why is it important? –

France is the EU’s second-biggest economy and also one of the world’s biggest military and diplomatic powers.

With two of the leading four top candidates hostile to the EU and NATO, the election could further shake up the West’s liberal post-war order, already rattled by Britain’s vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s election to the White House.

– How is the president elected? –

The president is elected directly by the people in a vote of one or two rounds. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority in the first round, a run-off is held two weeks later. Every presidential election since 1965 has gone to a second round.

– Who is running? –

Eleven candidates spanning the spectrum from Trotskyist left to far-right are running.